Strategy theory

Business Expansion

Businessexpansion presents potential benefits and drawbacks, some owners even unwilling to take the risk of growing a business, instead deciding to stay small. It’s never certain that expansion plans will be successful and can result in loses to profit. There is, however, a disadvantage to actively avoidinggrowth, as smaller businesses can be at a cost disadvantage compared to larger scale rivals. To compete, smaller firms need to contend on service and/or quality.

When a business grows it gains a competitive edge over smaller rivals. Larger firms have more influence over market price and they’re also big enough to be price setters. A larger business may have lower unit costs due to its size, able to buy materials cheaply and in bulk, and also spread the costs of expensive marketing campaigns and overheads across larger sales.

Ways in which a business can expand include:internal growth, where the business grows by hiring more staff and equipment in order to increase their output;external growth, where mergers or take-overs combine two firms, increasing the scale of operation, andfranchising where a business will lease its ideas to franchises, allowing new branches to open both nationally and globally.

Supporting Documents

These downloads will help to put strategy theory into context using real world examples from real businesses.